


The Fear of Losing You

by lunrdarling



Category: IASIP, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it's always sunny
Genre: Angst, BUT its sweet at the same time?, F/M, I'm Sorry, charlie's illiteracy but ended up, depression tw, idk sorry this started out as an idea about, it's only got 3 chapters btw, its real sad and dark y'all, suicide TW, suicide attempt tw, taking a terrible turn, they're all posted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 19:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12217131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunrdarling/pseuds/lunrdarling
Summary: Charlie goes to the hospital.





	1. Finding Charlie

**Author's Note:**

> If you're triggered by mention of suicide, suicide attempts, or depression then this definitely isn't the fic for you.

“Charlie?” Dee entered the apartment, “Where the hell are you, Charlie? Dennis said you were supposed to be at the bar like an hour ago.” 

She flicked the light on to reveal the mess. Frank and Charlie’s apartment had never been the cleanest, but this was bad. Even before Frank lived with him, Charlie had never let it get this bad before. The smell assaulted her nose. She gagged, holding her nose shut and breathing through her mouth so it was a little more bearable. There was no way to navigate through the apartment without stepping on garbage and dirty clothes, so she didn’t even try. 

“Come on Charlie,” She called out. 

There were a few piles of dirty laundry and she kicked gently at them, knocking them over in case he was buried in them. If it had been anyone else, she wouldn’t have bothered to look but with Charlie, you could never really know. He didn’t seem to be anywhere in the main room, though. The futon was folded back into the couch without the cushions on it. They were probably hidden under trash or being used around the apartment for a makeshift version of something else. 

She walked towards the bathroom door. It was cracked open just a small amount. There was really no telling what kind of mess was waiting behind the door and she didn’t really want to have to find out. However, she was sent to find him and she couldn’t very well say he wasn’t in his apartment if she hadn’t checked the whole place. Part of her thought that she could just tell Dennis and Mac that she hadn’t found him. There was another part of her, hidden deeper inside of her, that wanted to find him and make sure he was okay. 

Recently, he’d drunkenly confided in her that he was struggling with a deep depression. It had been bothering him for awhile but with Frank occupying an apartment somewhere else in town for some scam he wouldn’t let the rest of the gang in on, Charlie was really feeling it hit him harder. He’d told her that it had started a few months back, after a rough day of Charlie Work and particularly harsh round of insults from Dennis. The insults had really hit a few nerves and had made him start thinking-- something Charlie had never really been good at. That started a downward spiral that just hadn’t stopped. 

Dee knocked lightly against the bathroom door with her knuckles. 

“If you’re in there, you better not be naked,” She waited a few seconds before she pushed the door open farther. 

The sight waiting for her sucked all the air out of her lungs. 

There was some trash and dirty clothes scattered around the bathroom floor, but that wasn’t what she was focused on. In the midst of it all, Charlie was lying on his back, his head tilted to the side and his eyes looking hazy. His jaw was slack and his face was a little pale. He had an empty bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and there were three bottles of pills on the counter. They were all almost completely empty as well. 

She was having trouble breathing, but that didn’t stop her from rushing to kneel at his side. Dee grabbed his jaw with one of her hands and turned his head to look at his face a little better. She shook him a bit. 

“Charlie? Charlie, can you hear me?” She shook him again, “Charlie!” 

He groaned a little bit, and his bottom lip twitched.

“Oh god, oh thank god,” He wasn’t passed out, but he was probably close. She sat him up, her hands shaking hard. How long had he been like this? How long did he have left? Should she call 911? They didn’t have insurance, and she wasn’t sure that they could afford any trip he took to the ER. She didn’t think they’d be able to scam a way out of not paying the bill either. Having Charlie alive was worth having a hospital bill they couldn’t pay, though. 

She could try something else first, though. 

It wasn’t easy, but she sat Charlie up and moved him into the shower as best as she could. Dee took a deep breath and then did something she never thought she’d have to. She stuck two fingers down the back of Charlie’s throat. It didn’t take long before he was gagging and throwing up on himself. She tried as best as she could to lean him in a way that he wouldn’t get it on himself, but it didn’t work well.

She thought she’d have to do it more than once but it seemed like once she’d induced it once, his body did the rest. As he continued to throw up, she realized that maybe it hadn’t been the best idea. There were pauses in between each time he vomited, but it didn’t seem like he was going to stop any time soon. Now there was an entirely new problem. If this made things worse for him, it would be her fault. 

She pulled her phone out of her pocket as quickly as she could and dialed 911. When the operator picked up, Dee barely gave them a chance to give their basic prompt. 

“My friend overdosed and drank a lot of alcohol and I need an ambulance,” She didn’t know when she’d started crying, but her heaving breaths made it difficult to get the words out. 

“Stay calm, ma’am. What’s your address?” 

Usually, she would have snapped at them. She would have asked them how they expected her to stay calm, or why she should stay calm when one of her best friends was in the process of possibly dying. But she didn’t have it in her right now, because she was too scared and needed help too badly.   
She told them the address of Charlie’s apartment and the 911 operator told her that an ambulance was on it’s way. They told her to stay on the phone with them, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to set the phone down and be with Charlie without this stranger trying to talk to her and keep her calm. It wasn’t helping. They were trying to reassure her that it was going to be okay. Dee knew that they couldn’t guarantee that. It was just something that they said to make people feel better in emergencies. This stranger in some operating room somewhere had no idea what was going to happen to Charlie. They had no way of knowing if he was going to live or die. 

Dee had to tell them that she’d made him throw up, and that now he wasn’t stopping. They didn’t say anything about whether or not that was a bad idea but Dee had a habit of always assuming that people were judging her for her decisions. She got defensive automatically. She started to cry harder.

“I’m so sorry,” She sobbed. The 911 operator was saying something to her, but she wasn’t listening. She wasn’t talking to them anymore. 

Dee held Charlie close to her. He’d stopped throwing up. She didn’t know if that was good or bad. She didn’t think too much about it. She just held him close to her chest and rocked him back and forth, “I’m so sorry Charlie.. Please, please stay with me,” She ran her hands through his hair and rubbed his back. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and fell off her chin. Her chest was tight and her hands was shaking and she felt like maybe she might pass out herself. But she had to stay strong for Charlie. She had to be here for Charlie, because no one else had been.


	2. Waiting for Charlie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee has to call the gang and let them know what's up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More talk of depression and suicide.

Almost 15 hours later, Charlie was lying in a hospital bed. The room was dark except for a lamp lit beside the bed and the fluorescent light coming through the small, square window on the door. Dee had been in a chair right beside him ever since the doctor’s had pumped his stomach and let her in to see him. She’d been nice to the doctors and the nurses that came to check on him every few hours. It wasn’t because of any ulterior motives like it might have been normally. She just didn’t have it in her heart to have any kind of attitude towards the people who saved Charlie’s life. 

All she did was sit in her chair and hold his hand. A nurse had offered her some food, but she had no appetite. She’d thrown up three times while she was waiting for the doctor’s to give her updates on Charlie, and her stomach had been in painful knots ever since. They’d lent her a pair of hospital sweats because she refused to go home and change out of her vomit encrusted clothes and Charlie’s doctor said it was too unsanitary to allow her to stay dressed that way. The sweatshirt was oversized and hung off her body, swallowing her upper half and making her body look skinnier than she already was.  
At some point, she’d forced herself to step out into the hallway to make the phone calls that she’d been dreading. The first call she’d made was to Frank. She expected him to be insensitive and weird about it. She thought she was going to have to beg him not to come by the hospital, because she knew that would only cause a scene. It was impossible for her father to go anywhere without bringing attention to himself and causing a commotion. That wasn’t what she needed right now, and that certainly wasn’t what Charlie needed. 

However, Frank had surprised her. When she’d told him what happened, and asked him not to come by, he’d been compliant of her wishes. He’d sounded a bit choked up, almost. He’d told her to keep him updated on what was going on, and even thanked her for calling to tell him what was going on. Without even being asked, he told her that he would pay for the hospital bill. 

“You tell them to do whatever they need to do and I’ll pay for it,” He’d told her. 

She couldn’t see him, but she smiled anyway. 

She thanked him and told him she’d let him know when Charlie woke up. She also asked him not to tell Mac or Dennis, because she hadn’t yet, and she didn’t know what she was going to tell them. She didn’t go as far as to make him swear on anything, but he offered up a genuine promise anyway. It warmed her heart to hear her father being an actual caring human being for once. She couldn’t even find it in herself to be bitter at the fact that he didn’t act this way about her when she was in trouble. Now wasn’t the time for that. 

When it came time to call Mac and Dennis, the knots in her stomach grew tighter. She took a few sips from the water fountain in the hall and paced around a bit. It wasn’t technically fair to keep this information from them, but she knew that they weren’t going to do anything to make the situation better. Afterall, they were part of the reason why he’d gotten so depressed in the first place. Or Dennis was, at least. Charlie had always been closer to Mac anyway. Maybe she’d only need to tell Mac, and she could bribe him into not telling Dennis until Charlie was out of the hospital. 

Dee let out sigh and typed in Mac’s number, holding the phone to her ear as she waited for his answer. This wasn’t going to be easy. Mac, much like Charlie himself, didn’t really know how to calmly react to things. Maybe it was a little unfair to want him to react calmly. But she needed him to listen to her and if he was freaking out, she knew that he wouldn’t. 

When he answered, she’d asked if he was with Dennis. He wasn’t.

Once she started explaining everything to him, she didn’t stop until she was finished. She could feel him wanting to interrupt her multiple times, but she didn’t let him. Dee told him almost everything she knew-- aside from the depression bits that Charlie had told her in confidence. After everything was explained, there was no response from the other side of the phone.   
“Mac?” 

Still nothing. 

“Are you there?” She waited. 

“Yeah.. Yeah, I’m here,” He let out a shaky sigh, “Have you told anyone else?” 

“Just Frank,” Dee crossed one arm over her chest.

There were a few more moments of silence. 

“Hello?” She worried that maybe he’d passed out or something. 

“We can’t tell Dennis,” He said quickly. 

Obviously she agreed, but she hadn’t expected Mac to bring it up. She’d been prepared for a teeth-pulling effort of convincing Mac to stay quiet. This was unusual and it actually made her a bit uncomfortable. Mac wanting to hide something from Dennis was like seeing a cat enjoy taking a bath-- you knew it was possible, but you didn’t think you’d ever see it happen. 

“Right.. Yeah, I wasn’t going to. I--” 

“Good,” Mac cut her off before she could finish talking, “We can tell him after Charlie’s home again, maybe.. Maybe…” He stopped talking, but Dee had a feeling he wasn’t done. She was right, “Dee… Can I tell you something?” 

“Yeah..” Dee said hesitantly, a little afraid of what she was about to hear. 

“This isn’t,” His voice cracked a bit, “This isn’t the first time Charlie’s done something like this.”

Dee’s stomach dropped. Her knees felt weak. She leaned back against the wall and slid down to sit on the hallway floor. She didn’t say anything, because Mac had more to say. 

“In ninth grade, he hadn’t come to school.. I didn’t think that it was a big deal but usually he told me when he was gonna skip, so I could skip with him, y’know?” She heard him sniffle, “But he didn’t tell me. He just didn’t show up.. And usually I would have checked other places first, to look for him, but something just told me to go to his house..”

“When I got there, the door was unlocked. His mom wasn’t home. She was at work, or something… I called for him but he, he didn’t respond, right?” Mac’s voice was shaking. Dee had started to silently cry again, “He passed out upstairs… He’d had an entire six pack of beers by himself, and then took a bunch of pills from his mom’s medicine cabinet..”

The line went silent for a long time, neither one of them saying anything. 

“What did you do?” She finally whispered.

“I tried to wake him up,” His voice was hoarse and scratchy when he spoke again, “But he just.. Wouldn’t… I didn’t know what to do.. It would have probably.. Probably made more sense to call 911 but instead I just picked him up and put him in a wheelbarrow and pushed him to the hospital….” It was very clear that Mac was crying at this point. Dee didn’t judge him because she was too. 

“They called his mom when I got him there… They said I just barely got him there in time.. Me and Charlie decided to just never talk about it again.. He said it was an accident. I knew it wasn’t but.. He said it wouldn’t happen again, so I didn’t ask any more questions..” He sniffled, “I should have asked so many questions…” 

“Mac.. Oh Mac, you couldn’t have kn-”

“Dennis is here. I have to go,” Mac hung up before she could say anything else, leaving her on her own again. 

She sat on the hallway floor for a very long time, staring at the floor and letting this new information envelope her. There was so much more to all of this than just a few months of depression. Dee had always known that Charlie had some problems. Some real, deeply rooted problems that couldn’t be easily figured out by talking to him for a few hours about some feelings he was having. But she didn’t know to what extent, until now. And even now she was sure she didn’t know the full story. She wasn’t seeing the entire picture.


	3. Loving Charlie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie wakes up.

Dee sat by Charlie’s side for about three more hours before he woke up.

She’d been crying on and off the entire time. Her thoughts were racing and she had a terrible headache. The nurses had really been trying to get her to eat something. They were clearly very concerned for her, but she insisted that she didn’t need anything. She insisted that she was fine. Compared to Charlie, she was.

Luckily she wasn’t crying when Charlie woke up. 

He stirred just a bit at first before slowly blinking his eyes open. He moved his hand to rest on his stomach. Discomfort was clear on his face. It was expected, the nurses had told her, after they’d had to pump the contents of it out. His brows furrowed for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the light in the room. Then, he seemed to realize there was someone holding his hand. 

Charlie turned his head in her direction and she couldn’t read the reaction on his face when she saw him. It didn’t matter, though. Whatever was confusion or surprise was originally there melted away into a look in his eyes that she’d never seen before. It warmed her heart and loosened up some of the knots in Dee’s stomach. 

“Hi,” She whispered softly, rubbing her thumb gently against the back of his hand. He opened his mouth to speak, but she gestured for him to stay silent for a second, “Hold on,” She reached over to the tray beside his bed and picked up a paper cup. Dee tipped it gently against his lips and he took a few sips of water. 

He swallowed with a pained look on his face, but then relaxed his brow in relief. 

“How are you feeling?” She asked softly. 

“My stomach hurts,” His voice was hoarse. 

It wasn’t totally appropriate, but she couldn’t keep herself from laughing a little bit. 

“Yeah well, that’s probably pretty normal considering they pumped everything out of it,” She gave him a small but sympathetic smile. 

Charlie didn’t smile back. Instead, he looked down at his hand resting in his lap. He clenched his jaw and then relaxed it again. 

“How long have I been here?” He asked, still not looking up. 

“About 18 hours,” She told him, glancing over at the clock on the wall before looking back at him. 

“How long have you been here?” 

“About 18 hours,” She repeated again, laughing a little. 

Charlie lifted his head and looked at her, wide eyed. 

“What?” 

“You need to go home, you need to sleep and you need to--” He tried to sit up in bed but stopped, cringing in pain and laying back down again. 

“Slow down there, cowboy,” She scooted her chair forward until she couldn’t be any closer, “Take it easy.” 

“Seriously, Dee..” He looked her in the eye.

“I’m not going anywhere, Charlie,” She looked right back at him. Dee didn’t just mean that she was staying with him in the hospital room. Her words extended much, much farther than that. She had a feeling that Charlie knew that, although she didn’t know how. 

She squeezed his hand softly, and he squeezed back. 

“Is anyone else here?” He didn’t look excited. It didn’t seem like he was asking because he hoped that his other friends were waiting outside the door to come in and speak to him. 

“No,” Dee shook her head and could see his shoulders relax a bit when she told him, “Just me.”

He nodded. 

A nurse came in. 

When she saw he was awake, she asked him how she was doing. She took his vitals and told him what exactly they’d done. She told him that they could send in a hospital psychiatrist to talk to him, if he wanted. Charlie said he didn’t want that and didn’t look at Dee when he did. She stayed silent. It wasn’t her decision to make, and she knew it wouldn’t do any good to insist. If Charlie didn’t want it then it wouldn’t do any good, because he wouldn’t get any use out of the whole thing anyway. 

After a few minutes, the nurse left. 

Neither one of them said anything. Dee had made an internal decision that she wasn’t going to say anything until he did. She wanted to give him time to think or process or whatever he needed to do. He’d been through a lot and the last thing she wanted was to be nagging at him right after he’d woken up. She’d stay silently by his side like she’d done all day until he decided that he wanted to speak. 

“Dee?” He finally broke the silence after about 8 or 9 minutes. 

“Yeah, Charlie?” 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” He said with a shaking voice, looking in her direction but not making eye contact, “Not… not right now.” 

“Okay,” She said softly, giving his hand another squeeze, “That’s fine. We don’t have to talk about it right now.” 

The ‘right now’ bit was the most important part. He’d added that at the end, and to Dee it meant that they’d talk about it later. Whether he thought it meant that or not, she wasn’t totally sure. But they were going to talk about it. She wouldn’t attack him or yell at him or be cruel about it. She wanted to have a gentle conversation. She wanted to ask him questions and let him talk about things that were obviously bothering him. He could talk and Dee could listen and together they could maybe find a way to make things better for Charlie. She still hadn’t decided whether or not she was going to tell him that she knew about what he’d done in high school. That was another thing that she’d worry about later. 

“Thank you,” He looked her in the eyes now, “Thank you so much,” Charlie’s voice was soft and quiet in a way she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard before. His words had a heavy meaning behind them, and they both knew that. They both knew what all he was thanking her for, without him having to spell it all out. She wouldn’t make him do that.

She nodded. 

Then, Dee lifted her hand that wasn’t holding Charlie’s and ran it slowly through his hair. His head relaxed back against the pillows. His eyes shut gently and he took slow breaths. Just being able to see his chest rise and fall meant so much to Dee. She would never forget the panic she felt when she first saw him on the bathroom floor and tried so hard to tell whether or not he was still breathing. It hurt her heart to remember, and she tried not to think about it right now. 

“I want you to stay at my place,” She said, breaking the silence, “When you get out of here, I mean… I want you to stay at my place so I can keep an eye on you,” Dee didn’t know how he was going to react to this, but it was something she’d decided needed to happen. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. But she didn’t really want to have to demand him and force him against his will. She hoped it wouldn’t be that difficult, “Please,” She added. 

He opened his eyes about halfway and turned his head a little to look at her again. 

“Yes, please,” Charlie said softly, nodding his head. 

She exhaled a heavy breath of relief. 

Then, she leaned forward and planted a gentle, lasting kiss on his forehead. 

“Get some more rest,” She knew that the nurse had put some more sedatives in his IV. They’d explained that they wanted him to sleep during the worst parts of his stomach pains, so that he would only have to feel a dull ache instead of anything too intense, “I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

Charlie nodded. 

Dee took a second to pull the blankets up high on him and smiled a bit when he snuggled down into the shitty hospital mattress. She ran her hand through his hair one more time before taking his hand in hers again. Exhaustion was starting to hit her hard now, but she blinked it away as best as she could and settled back into her chair. Maybe she could have some food now that Charlie had woken up and she knew he was actually okay, officially. 

“Hey Dee?” He didn’t open his eyes as he mumbled. 

“Yeah, Charlie?” 

“I love you,” He said softly. 

She smiled at him as he lay in the hospital bed. Tears welled in her eyes for the hundredth time today, but for a different reason now. 

“I love you too, Charlie.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. Dee lifted the hand of his that she was holding and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of it, “I love you too..”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought/think. Thanks for reading. xo


End file.
